ContextThe pinewood of Marina
di Castagneto Carducci was born early last century as a result of a process of
reclamation of the coastal dune belt. In the late Fifties architect Giancarlo
De Carlo draw up an urban development characterized by the large presence of
the landscape, in which buildings, surrounded by dunes dotted with pines, oaks
and myrtles, with strong character and individuality are connected by paths
that follow the free conformation of the landscape.
The consequence of this,
but especially because a rapid process of tissue development built since the Sixties,
is the heterogeneity of the architectural presence: buildings realized with
quality, often characterized by the use of stone walls as an expressive
character, with formal features that often do not disdain to look at the best
Italian and European experiences of the Fifties, are counterbalanced by
buildings of little value, inconsistent in their morphological and decorative
devices, often the result of successive transformations and uncertain.
OpportunityThe work presented here
was created by the occasion of a renovation of a summer residence built in the
Mid-Sixties. The poor architectural quality of the existing building is an
opportunity to think about the quality of the landscape in which the building
stands on a sand dune, surrounded by pine trees located in singular points,
often very close to the walls.

The project outlines a
double perspective: on one hand the need to find a synthesis between the nature
of the building - although still to be discovered - and the morphological and
color values of the place where it is located, the other hand the desire to
place the character of the interior in keeping with a trend made of comfort,
domesticity, appropriateness. All this applies especially in the modulation of
light and views, to the extent and shape of spaces, in the discretion of the
materials.

A longitudinal ideal
director, through the whole building, allowing you to find a convergence
between two significant operational aspects: firstly, the redefinition of the
internal space, which translates into a sequence of rooms through closely
related to each other and with the landscape surrounding, and secondly the
identification of the character of the building in a new morphology, at the
same time natural and archetypal, finding in the horizontal sediment a new
axpressive character.

From these thoughts
descend the criterion of remodeling openings in the building: almost all different
but built taking into account both the sequence of the interior, the
relationship between the room and the external balance, the relationship
mass-punching of the building. This is especially evident in the large
dining-room window, at the end of successive openings of the same size, framing
a view of the dune landscape.

MatterThe emergence of the
archetypal character of the intervention is manifested in the morphology of the
new shape, which highlights the double-pitched roof and a certain compact
terminals in the two fronts - but mitigating these formal features in the
central, predominantly horizontal.
The material used for
the exterior, a travertine marble, helps to read the morphology of the building
as a result of an ideal unit mass made of different sediments, giving further
color consonance with the surrounding landscape.

The limited range of
materials - travertine marble cladding also present in the interior, plaster, teak
wood, used to give continuity to the horizontal planes inside and out - helps
to make a presence in the pinewood grove that thrives on a refined ambiguity:
while providing a comfortable refuge from the outside world, both within
himself introduces the landscape that surrounds it.